| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | Jay Gould a Great Man | [9] |
| II. | Youth and Ancestry of Jay Gould | [18] |
| III. | Gould as Surveyor and Historian | [29] |
| IV. | Gould and the Tannery War | [37] |
| V. | Gould’s Romantic Marriage and First Railroad | [49] |
| VI. | Gould’s Assault upon Erie | [58] |
| VII. | Gould’s Victory and Final Defeat in Erie | [73] |
| VIII. | The Gold Conspiracy | [88] |
| IX. | Culmination of Conspiracy—Black Friday | [106] |
| X. | Gould and the Western Railway Systems | [132] |
| XI. | Gould and the Telegraph Monopoly | [151] |
| XII. | Gould and the Manhattan Elevated | [161] |
| XIII. | The Life of a Wall Street King | [170] |
| XIV. | The King is Dead | [181] |
| XV. | Jay Gould Laid to Rest | [193] |
| XVI. | Personal Characteristics of Jay Gould | [214] |
| XVII. | The Family of Jay Gould | [226] |
| XVIII. | The Great Fortune and Its Inheritors | [245] |
| XIX. | Jay Gould’s Relations with the Public | [264] |
| XX. | A Chapter of Anecdotes | [280] |
ILLUSTRATIONS.
| PAGE | |
| Portrait of Jay Gould | [Frontispiece] |
| Young Gould in His Father’s Dairy | [18] |
| Jay Gould as a Surveyor | [29] |
| Canvassing for His Book, “The History of Delaware County” | [32] |
| The Tannery War in Pennsylvania | [37] |
| Gould’s First Glimpse of His Future Wife | [49] |
| The Men of “Black Friday” | [88] |
| “Black Friday” in Wall Street | [106] |
| Gould Before the Congressional Committee | [132] |
| Gould Fainting at Directors’ Meeting in Russell Sage’s Office | [161] |
| Gould’s Birthplace and Palace on the Hudson | [170] |
| Jay Gould’s Death-bed | [181] |
| Funeral of Jay Gould | [193] |
| Where Jay Gould Rests | [200] |
| A Family Group | [226] |
| Portrait of George Gould | [245] |
| Jay Gould’s Private Car and Yacht, “Atalanta” | [264] |
CHAPTER I.
JAY GOULD A GREAT MAN.
In every walk of human life, in every imaginable human occupation, that man who stands at the very top, who is superior to all others in that particular occupation, is of necessity a great man. No matter how humble that occupation may be, absolute superiority in it, in itself means greatness. The time once was when commercial eminence was considered to belong rather to the lower classes, and was, indeed, despised by those who thought themselves to be of knightlier blood than their fellows. The Crusades, the Renaissance, the discovery of America, and the impetus these gave to voyage and trade and commerce, were potent factors in changing all of this. For the last few centuries, commercial ability, financial capacity, knowledge of how to manipulate men and measures in a way to increase fortune, and so to secure more of what fortune will buy, have been more and more appreciated, until to-day aristocracy and royalty clip coupons, families whose ancestors trace from the Conqueror invest in stocks and draw dividends, and the bluest blooded of all great families engage with avidity in the struggle for business and wealth.
Since royalty and aristocracy thus deign to enter the lists of business competition, does it not become more true that that man is really great, who excels in money-making capacity every other individual in the world, who wins the prize from all his high competitors, and in his lifetime, by his own acumen and manipulation, creates a greater fortune, adds more to his wealth, than has ever any other person in the world? That is what has been done by Jay Gould, “The Wizard of Wall Street,” who has just been taken from the possession of this enormous wealth, and whose death has awakened such universal interest in his life, his history and his personality.
It is hard to realize what an enormous distinction is in the fact of being the richest man in the world. For Gould not only created his fortune, but he made it greater than is possessed by any other individual in the world. It is true that there are families, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Rothschilds, whose aggregated wealth far exceeds the fortune left by Mr. Gould. But no individual of one of those families possesses an amount nearly equal to that represented by the Gould properties. Mr. Gould has been absolutely unrivaled in his position as a money-maker. Though he has met with reverses at times, and was once on the verge of actual bankruptcy, these have been due, in slight degree, to the action of his opponents in the market, but rather to some relaxation of his own energies, or some unforeseen combination of circumstances. The men who have been against him, with few exceptions, have lost while he has won. To be wealthy and to play with the Gould securities, it has been necessary to follow him, not to oppose.
In downright dramatic interest, in its exhibition of results achieved through the exercise of intellectual qualities which were themselves an achievement, and in the examples which it furnishes of the consistent development of traits which can scarcely be considered as the dower of heredity, and yet were already apparent at the outset, the life story of Jay Gould surpasses by far the histories of the great financiers, speculators and railway managers with whom he was either directly or remotely associated in a career which practically embraced the whole modern phase of financial operation. Like Drew, Vanderbilt and Fisk, he was of humble origin and began at an early age to carve out his fortunes on lines which lay far from those to which his youthful surroundings seemed to direct him. But his first exhibitions of independent and original activity were directed toward the acquiring of an intellectual equipment of an entirely different order from that which his great rivals in Wall street boasted. Nothing is plainer than that he was a born money-maker, but it is easily possible that if early success in this direction had not encouraged him to bend his energies solely to the acquisition of wealth, he might have devoted himself not only successfully, but much to his own satisfaction, to higher pursuits. Though he was an absolutely tireless worker in the field of money-getting, one can scarcely study his operations, whether as a mere speculator or as the creator and developer of great industrial enterprises, without becoming convinced that the incitement to many of his colossal operations was quite as much a love for intellectual occupation as for money. Human nature is generally set down as a universal possession, and Mr. Gould was yet a young man when the scope of his financial operations was such as to give clear evidence that the material things of this world were abundantly cared for in his possessions. He had, of course, the instincts of a born speculator, yet his was not the disposition to let results depend simply on the accidental fall of the dice, or the turn of a card. He loved hazard, but he loved better to compel chance to enter the channels he had dug for it. It would be folly to deny the vast value of his work in the development of the Western and Southwestern States, but perhaps as great a folly to attribute a philanthropic or patriotic motive to it.